Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

  ~ ~ ~

  When the girl who called herself June awoke it was the next day and, other than the buzzing of the neon clock, the house was quiet. Again, the whiff of gasoline. Her brain cleared enough to sit up, feel the lumpy skull beneath layers of gauze, take in what appeared to be a sparsely furnished living room. Across from her, flanked by shuttered windows, the open door let in dry, lazy currents of air rippling a black, floor-to-ceiling curtain to her right; to her left, a long, busy table beneath the clock. Her bed was a metal-framed futon and she realized the significance of the last words she had heard. Aside from the sheets wrapped about her, she had no clothes. There were more bandages and bruises than originally noticed and an exploring finger revealed her head had been shaved. More alarming was the powerful urge to urinate that her rubbery legs would not accommodate. She called out, the sore throat had eased a bit; he walked from behind the black curtain and helped her to and from the toilet.

  "Do I have any clothes?"

  "Well, no. I'll have to get you some." Assisting her back into the bed, he handled her with great physical ease. This was not a man who worked out in a gym; his strength came from putting his lean, six-foot-two frame to whatever tasks he had taken on. A greyed head of hair and lines in his face suggested he was close to fifty, maybe older. His fatherliness carried itself with the energy of an agile thirty-year-old whose sense of motion was tempered by the confidence of age and wisdom.

  Drawing up a chair and sitting next to her, he explained seeing her facedown on the banks of the Pecos River and assuming she was a corpse. The body was still warm and, imagining the faintest of heartbeats, he administered CPR; the organ in her chest pulsed, it thumped, it thumped again. She puked up water, mud, a barely audible "god??dammit," and passed out. With the remains of the dress she had been wearing, he bandaged her bleeding head and limbs, loaded her into the car and drove her to safety. Hospitals were unreachable and he was skilled in emergency procedures. Besides, he grinned, this way she would have no huge medical bill to pay. When she asked where she was he was evasive, saying only that it was not a concern, she was being well taken care of.

  "Who is Dedra?"

  "She's my friend. My best friend."

  "And so your obsession with the letter D."

  "D?"

  "For days you were chanting or calling out 'D.'"

  "Was I?"

  "Apparently, you were calling out for her?"

  "Oh. I don't remember that."

  "The best I can figure is you got caught in one of the flash floods and got swept into the Pecos. A tough enough thing to survive. You were beat up pretty good and your head made damn hard contact with something, probably a big rock. I didn't count them but it was a lot of stitches, and from the looks of it you're lucky your skull didn't split open. Somehow none of your bones got broken." He shook his head and clasped her hand in both of his. "You have a lot to be thankful for."

  "Omigod." She tightened her grip on his hands. "Omigod. I remember. We stopped to pee. There was this creek. The water hit me and?" A blitzkrieg of memory divebombed her and tried to finish the job the river didn't complete. For one dazzling second there was comfort in the idea of death, and she understood life far more than any mind had a right.

  "It's OK," he said, "I know that remembering is often a curse."

  "Where's Dedra?"

  "Maybe I can find out somehow." He eased their hands apart and squeezed her shoulder. "In the meantime you need to rest and get your strength back."

  "Will you? My god, I'm so hungry."

  "That's good. You haven't eaten in a long time."

  "How long have I been here?"

  "About a week now. I was worried you wouldn't come around."

  "Come around?"

  "Like I said, you almost died. That's some serious trauma. Listen, I think you could use some air. Get an arm around my neck." Reaching under her legs, with one strong heave he had her up, out the door and into an old deck lounger. Ducking back inside, he retrieved blankets, pillows and tucked her in to a solid comfort. "Don't go anywhere. I'm gonna fix you some food."

  "Uh, sure." She watched him disappear through the door and decided she was somewhere in a desert. Under the open shadows of the porch hummed warm, heavenly breezes. Straight ahead was the mean and powerful car, beyond it an expanse of dirt, sand, low shrubs and scraggly trees. Off to the left was a partially hidden structure of corrugated metal, some blurry objects, and the near-sighted realization her glasses were gone. Closing her eyes, June got lost in the act of breathing. Of inhaling. Of exhaling. Of the process being involuntary, and of a likelihood this man had breathed into her for no reason other than to give the moment to feel streams of tears pouring down her cheeks.